So Lal and a group of seven other writers, Deb Kumar Das, Anita Desai, Sasthibrata Chakravarti who writes by the name of Sasti Bratha, William Hull, Jail Ratan, Kewlian Sio and Pradip Sen, decided that they would find a way to reach out to the world. “We decided that we would introduce our work through a magazine. We wanted to create a demand. Thus, Writers Workshop Miscellany was born,” he says. In a decade, it turned into a full-fledged publishing house.
Things started to fall in place. A small press in was found in a south Kolkata locality and a cheap deal struck. “Kolkata had and still has a culture which most of us are not aware of. We have hundreds of small presses all around the city, which print material for pittance. We took full advantage of that,” he says.

But getting noticed was far more difficult. “We sent our works to all the local newspapers. But no one would review a Writers Workshop book and why should they? We were nobodies. When was the last time you picked a book by a new, unknown writer?” he asks. So they began to review each other’s books. And encouraged other young writers to join the group. “In those days, there were no big publishing houses that catered to Indian writers. We were the only recourse for Indian writers in English,” he says.
Slowly, people started to sit up and take notice. Writers like Ruskin Bond and Anita Desai contributed to the cause. “We were winning the battle. People gradually started accepting Indian writing in English as a legitimate genre. And to think we were actually trying to throw this language out of this country,” he says.

... contd.